The Rate of Wamring

Helen Berry, associate dean in the faculty of health at the University of Canberra, said while the Earth has been warmer and colder at different points in the planet's history, the rate of change has never been as fast as it is today. ''What is remarkable, and alarming, is the speed of the change since the 1970s, when we started burning a lot of fossil fuels in a massive way,'' she said. ''We can't possibly evolve to match this rate [of warming] and, unless we get control of it, it will mean our extinction eventually.''

Is bald a hair color? Then, I guess, nada can be a rate of increase.

The fastest ‘rate of change’ from the 1970s to the 1990s has morphed into a ‘zero’ rate of change since the turn of the century. Can we release our collective anxiety now? It is tough for a rate of change for anything to be a cause of anything when the rate is zero.

The sky has stopped falling although some who need something to be alarmed about prefer to ignore(deny) the evidence. Mother Nature has mocked the alarm. This should be cause for elation but alarmists need something to be alarmed about. It is in their nature. They are beginning to look very silly as they scurry around looking for man made disaster and come up empty.

More and more of the populace are not convinced of the urgency of the ‘greatest problem mankind has ever faced’. Climate changes. When hasn’t that been the case? There is nothing going on with the climate that hasn’t happened at some point in the past. CO2 has been at much higher levels for much of the last 570 million years. And yet here we are. No runaway global warming to kill us off. To paraphrase George Carlin’s more colorful language “the planet is fine. It is the people who are nuts.’

We have met POGO and he is not us.